


we were built to fall apart

by Naladot



Category: EXO (Band), K-pop, f(x)
Genre: F/M, Moving On, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-30
Updated: 2015-05-30
Packaged: 2018-04-02 01:34:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4040620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naladot/pseuds/Naladot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After their kpop careers end, they get a second chance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we were built to fall apart

**Author's Note:**

> Not real & doesn't pretend to be. Originally posted to LJ in December 2014.

When it’s all over, Krystal doesn’t stay in Seoul. There’s something embarrassing about the way her peers keep clinging to to their thinning dreams, clambering over each other for that now-dim spotlight. Krystal sees all of this for what it is and then she gets out of town.

California isn’t home but she’s not really looking to belong so much as she is trying to quit fame the way you quit cigarettes, so it suits her in an odd way, being in the same state as Hollywood and yet being anonymous. She cuts her hair to her shoulders. Gets a PR job in San Diego and rents an apartment that’s close enough to the beach that she could go often, but she never does. She makes friends, sort of. Living out on her own on the other side of the world requires her to relearn how to go about her daily life, and maybe the strangest thing is reminding herself that she doesn’t have to be suspicious that everyone she meets is trying to one-up her or use her somehow.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she insists to her sister over the phone as she rifles through a sale rack at Macy’s (alone). She mostly speaks English to her sister these days, for reasons she could analyze but doesn’t bother with. She doesn’t like her worlds jumbled up in her brain, is all.

“It’s your birthday,” Jessica says. “Aren’t you going to do anything? You have to celebrate.”

Krystal has a bottle of wine at her house and plans to watch _Love Actually_ , because for a romantic movie, there sure are a whole lot of sad and negative characters, and it suits her mood.

“I will,” Krystal says into the phone. She picks up a dress off the rack—glittery, short, looks like something straight out of an SM textbook concept. She puts it back. “Some of the girls from work are taking me out to this dessert place downtown.”

“Good.” Jessica sounds relieved. Krystal’s conscience barely twinges; she’d rather lie to her sister than endure her worrying. In the end it’s always been the two of them, sacrificing and suffering for each other—it’s better to just lie.

“And I’ll buy myself a present.” Krystal picks up a marked-down sweatshirt off the rack and heads for the register.

“That’s good,” Jessica says. “You know, your twenty-fifth birthday only comes once.”

“Every birthday only comes once,” Krystal says. Jessica laughs the way she’s supposed to, and Krystal half-wishes she’d gone crazy and flown to New York City just to see her, but something had stopped her. Sometimes she wants nothing more than to just disappear.

 

 

The old crowd—as she mentally refers to her former celebrity peers—posts pictures continuously. Krystal rarely looks at them, but decides to indulge herself on her birthday. The first thing she sees is a picture of Wu Yifan ( _Kris_ is a long-lost name that doesn’t quite fit, but she has to remind herself not to use it, anyway) at some awards ceremony looking rich and prestigious, so there’s that. The next thing she sees is three videos Siwon has posted of his baby daughter wiggling her prominent eyebrows. Amber is, apparently, in Los Angeles visiting family. Suzy posted a picture from her movie set. After that, Krystal puts her phone away. She’s halfway through _Love Actually_ and she can’t remember how much wine before she starts to feel normal again. (After all, she chose to leave—no one else made that choice for her. People made a whole lot of other choices for her—but because of that, she’s never had anything to regret before.) (She doesn’t regret it.) (She wishes someone would learn Portuguese for _her_ like Colin Firth in this stupid movie—well, not Portuguese, but still.) (How many people learned Korean, or cared to try, just because of her?) (She needs more wine.)

The difference, she figures, between being a lonely Kpop star, and a lonely random PR agent, is that she’s not so terribly tired now. So all things considered, she has nothing to regret.

The movie ends in an airport, which brings back all sorts of memories. Krystal turns it off.

 

 

She can’t sleep and pulls her phone back out.

Sunyoung has posted a bunch of pictures with her boyfriend. Baekhyun and Taeyeon have apparently gotten back together, so that is a thing which is happening. Taemin is promoting a new single and the costume in the picture is so glittery the brightness of the phone screen hurts Krystal’s eyes. She doesn’t know why she’s looking at all this.

She’s shocked, then, when she opens her email and sees a message from Taemin himself. _I don’t know if you still use this email_ , it reads, _but Jongin is in California and seriously, someone needs to take the guy to Disneyland—sorry to bother you. I hope you’re doing okay._ He ended the email with Jongin’s phone number. She thinks back to the last time she saw Taemin—it was just before her contract ended, in a hallway at the SM building, and he had eyeliner smudged under his eyes and he was as thin as her. They didn’t speak. She can’t even remember the last time she saw Jongin.

Krystal glances at the clock. It’s 11 PM. She doesn’t think she’s drunk. But maybe she is a little bit, because she dials the number Taemin sent her.

 

 

She has the next day off and drives to Los Angeles. Her heart is in her throat the whole way there.

Jongin is in Los Angeles to help run the SM auditions, because even dying systems of training and debuting can still drag on for years if they’re making at least some money. Over the phone he said he was there as a “celebrity face,” and she wonders if he is trying to transition into a more stable career. She’d heard from someone that his back was ruined for any kind of serious dancing. She tries to think who it was, why she was talking to anyone about Jongin, why she remembers it now.

It’s the SM thing that’s making her nervous. She never auditioned like this herself but she’s seen enough to know what it’s like, the nerves and anticipation and hope. She’s a little scared that walking back into it will get her hooked again.

She pulls up to a parking space in the hotel and calls Jongin. In the time between when he says he’ll be right out and he actually emerges, the radio DJ announces a “throwback hit” and Gangnam Style starts playing. Krystal rolls her eyes (while mentally insisting that this is not disrespectful) and turns it off.

She sees him come out of the back doors of the hotel. He’s dressed in jeans and a button-down shirt and tennis shoes. His hands are shoved into his pockets and his back is just slightly hunched, the way you would walk through a crowd, only there’s no crowd around. His hair is dark. He looks the same, really, but worn around the edges. She gets out of the car and waves to him.

“Soojung,” he says, smiling as he walks up. “Hi.”

They hesitate for a moment, standing there looking at each other, not sure what to do. Krystal decides she doesn’t care. She steps forward and hugs him, wrapping one arm gingerly around his shoulders and patting his back, leaving space between their bodies.

“You look good,” she tells him. She means it—he doesn’t look too thin, and his smile seems genuine.

“You too,” he returns. He stares at her, then says, “So—are you taking me to Disneyland?”

 

 

They don’t do much at Disneyland—Jongin admits that he has to be careful about his back, which means no roller coasters or spinning rides. Krystal has a season pass—she doesn’t tell him, but she comes here by herself sometimes. She likes the pre-packaged, orchestrated, paid-for happiness of a theme park. She likes wandering around and listening to kids crying for a Mickey Mouse toy, or watching the parades and hearing the same songs played for the millionth time.

So they buy ice cream and wander.

“You know,” Jongin says after a while, breaking the silence, “We came here, way back at the beginning. A bunch of fans followed us around.” He glances at her and laughs. “I was thinking about that the other day—why were they so obsessed with us already? We hadn’t even done anything yet.”

Krystal snorts. “You were young and handsome and probably hanging all over each other.”

“Yeah,” he laughs. “We were pretty irresistible.”

Krystal rolls her eyes and shoves his shoulder, then realizes she’s being a bit flirty, and feels herself close him off. She doesn’t mean to do it, not really, only it’s been a long time, and old habits come back too easily. In the business you flirted with the people you were around just because they were the ones around.

“Do you miss it?” he asks. Krystal is drawn from her reverie and finds him watching her.

She doesn’t answer, weighing options in her head. Finally, she says, “I don’t know.” It’s the most truthful thing she’s said in a long time.

He grins. “Good answer.”

They start wandering again. Krystal wants to ask him if he misses it, too, but it seems a bit rude—he is still working. His band still exists, if only as a brand name, unlike hers. He’s still living in the middle of all of it, the shrinking and shifting pop music market. The new trend to come out of SM is a seventeen-year-old male solo artist who writes his own music and is working on capturing Asia with his dimples and sparkly eyes. Krystal watched his music video. She gets why he’s popular. She just doesn’t know what it means for the rest of them.

“Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I’d stayed.” It takes her a minute to be sure she said it out loud. The lines of people around them are noisy, and the sun is warm on her face. She feels very strange, like she’s living someone else’s life. Or maybe like this is her real life, and the other was a long dream from which she can’t wake up.

“Why didn’t you?” Jongin asks.

She shrugs and pulls on a strand of her hair. Nervous habit. “It just seemed—hopeless.” She sighs and looks at him, smiling although she doesn’t know why. “You know—trying to be an actress, because—why? Or, what, going solo? I would have hated that.”

He looks at her like he’s trying to puzzle her out. Krystal feels like she needs to justify herself—needs to remind him that she didn’t give up.

“I got tired of feeling like a robot, or—whatever we were.” She tilts her jaw to the side and looks at him, daring him to challenge her.

He’s quiet. The song playing behind them is some bright, irritating tune. Krystal isn’t sure what she’s doing here, especially with him. They weren’t close friends, before, and he was never on the list of people she’d visit if she ever took a trip back to Korea—but here they are.

“It was like that,” he says softly. “But it was also good, sometimes.”

Krystal waits for him to continue, but he doesn’t. The worst thing is she knows he’s right. It was good sometimes. As though she could ever forget what it was like to hear an arena screaming her name.

“What are you doing out here, Jongin?” she asks.

He chuckles and rubs the back of his neck, a boyish gesture. “I got restless,” he says. “Lonely. I don’t know. I wanted to just get out of the routine.”

“What happens to you, when it’s all over?” She tries to imagine him solo like Taemin, or acting, or—something else. She doesn’t know him well enough to guess. All she knows is that he ruined his back, and he’s in Los Angeles for no real reason, and all of a sudden she doesn’t want him to leave.

He chuckles again. “I don’t know.”

She could say a lot of things here—try to offer advice, or say the things so many people had said to her, that he would surely be successful and be able to carve out his own career and why would someone so beautiful and talented ever think about leaving? She could remind him that adoration could be milked for a little while longer, even while their fans slowly shifted into adoring someone younger and less damaged. Saying these things wouldn’t even be lies.

Instead she links their arms together, stepping close to him so that she’s pressed against his arm. She vaguely remembers a photoshoot or two with him, years ago. He’d surely had a crush on her then—she could feel buzzing in the air between him. Now she feels his posture stiffen. He might have a girlfriend back in Korea, or he might not even want her anymore. Krystal doesn’t care. She wants to be close to him and she doesn’t want to think about why. She can allow herself that much, once in a while.

“Are you okay?” Jongin asks.

Krystal steers them toward the line for the train that goes through the park, which isn’t really a ride, but it’s close enough. “Of course.” She glances up at him, smiling a little. “What do you mean?”

He is still holding his arm oddly, jutting it out to the side a little, so that she doesn’t come any closer to him as they walk. When they stop, she tightens her hold on his arm, wanting to see what will happen. He runs a hand over his hair and looks around, anywhere but right at her.

“The way you left, last year,” he says, as though he’s not sure he wants to say it, “It was—abrupt.”

Krystal remembers that, at the very end, she had filled out some paperwork for release forms early in the morning one Monday, and then that was it. She was no longer a pop star. She walked out of the SM building that morning a free woman. She hadn’t said goodbye to many people. What would she have said, anyway?

“And you’re out here all by yourself. I don’t know, I was just thinking.” He shakes his head as if to clear his thoughts. “You seem better than you were.”

“What are you getting at, Jongin?” she asks.

Finally he meets her gaze. She can see the dark circles worn under his eyes. His expression is frozen, almost crumpled. His mouth is open just slightly, like he’s holding back all of his thoughts for the sake of—what? The status quo? She slips her arm out from around his, wraps her arms around herself, and waits.

He clears his throat. “Is this really better? For you?”

She brushes her hair out of her eyes. The line moves forward around them, and she is at once aware of all the conversations surrounding her and also Jongin. His eyes haven’t left her. She’s always kept him on her peripheral. He was sweet but insignificant, and she knew back then that it was better to leave the sweet ones alone. It would always hurt worse, when it ended, if you might have had a chance together except for the grind of fame.

“Yeah, it is,” she says. She decides to be honest with him, recklessly. “I mean, I’m not happy. But I’m not wasting away either. I’m—I getting better, I guess.” She laughs and the sound is harsh to her own ears. “The only way to quit fame is cold turkey.”

She sees something glimmer in his eyes, like he’s trying to decide on what to say next. Her brain is already whirring ahead, figuring out how to reject him without hurting him too badly. If he weren’t one of the sweet ones maybe she would go back to his hotel room with him, indulge old attractions, and move on without it really mattering. But it would matter to him. She’s been keeping her own emotions locked away for a long time, and she knows better.

He gives her a half smile. “I’m glad you’re doing better,” he says. “It’s really good to see you like this.”

Somehow, this hurts worse than what she’d expected.

 

 

She drives him back to his hotel in the evening. In the parking lot, she climbs out of the car and circles around to the front to tell him goodbye. This might be the last time they ever see each other. Although it’s easy enough to say goodbye, sometimes Krystal can’t believe how many people she’s said goodbye to forever. Adding one more to the list—even if she’d thought previously she would never see him again and hadn’t cared much—rattles her.

“It was good to see you, Jongin,” she tells him.

He smiles, his lips pressed together, and this time he’s the one who steps forward and hugs her. She hugs him more tightly, this time. She thinks he needs affection from someone, even her.

“Well, bye.” She smiles and turns, leaving him on the sidewalk and heading back to her car.

Just before she reaches the door, he calls out her name. She turns, wanting to hear what he has to say.

But then some fans come rushing in out of nowhere, surrounding him with eager pleas for attention. He immediately shifts into Kai and smiles and bows his head and handles them all deftly. Jongin is nowhere to be seen. Krystal thinks about waiting for it to be over, but then she sees that one of the fans is staring at her, perplexed. Krystal watches the fan turn to get her friend’s attention. She doesn’t wait to see what will happen next, though. She jumps into the car and drives away from the hotel, fast, away from that world as quickly as she possibly can.

 

 

That night she is very much aware of the silence of her apartment. But it’s a comforting silence. A safe silence. She goes to bed and listens to the quiet.

 

 

In Los Angeles, Jongin lies awake in his hotel bed, staring at the glow of his phone.

Since she left the entertainment industry, Krystal has posted exactly five pictures. One, about a month after she left, is with her sister. The next is a picture from an airplane window, and the next a picture of food. One selca, announcing her haircut. A picture of the beach—from four months ago. In his world, becoming invisible online is the same as ceasing to exist. Krystal has willingly slipped through the cracks, and that he got the chance to see her at all must be as rare as seeing a ghost.

That’s how it felt. Like he was seeing a ghost—not only of her but of his younger self, the version of him that had been silently in love with her. His younger self, that had been in love with the stage, in love with fame, in love with the dream. He isn’t as disillusioned of it all as Krystal, but he knows well enough how that dream crumbles apart over the years. When he was a teenager he wanted to be a dancer, and he pursued it and achieved it and now he’s in physical therapy. The dream crumbles, he gets it. He just wonders if she thinks less of him for not leaving the way she did.

He texts Taemin _it’s no use_ and then flips over onto his stomach, sinking his face into the pillow. He knows he’s pathetic. He’s always been a dreamer, though, and by its nature, that’s a little bit sad.

_What did she say?_ Taemin sends back. Jongin decides not to answer—it’s easier than explaining that he hadn’t confessed much of anything to her.

The truth is that he came to Los Angeles with the vague hope that he would get the chance to see her. He never expected anything to happen. He knows well that they’ve never been close, and that it’s ridiculous for him to nurse a crush for so long.

The way it came about was he was sitting backstage, watching the new SM girl group rehearse for the company concert, marveling that all these years later the cycle hadn’t ended. The only difference was most of Jongin’s seniors had moved on, and now he was the senior, watching these girls (who are really just children) chase after the dream.

Yixing had come up and sat down next to him. He wasn’t going to renew his contract when it ended the next month—but they all knew this, were prepared for it. Jongin was surprised he’d stuck it out as long as he had, really. Jongin was surprised their group had held together at all.

“It’ll be different for them,” Yixing said, nodding toward the girl group on stage.

“You think so?” Jongin asked. He gave Yixing a look and found him staring pensively at the stage, his face blank, the way it was when he was thinking.

“The market’s different,” Yixing said. “Different terms. They didn’t come in expecting everything we did.”

“What did we expect?” Jongin was half-joking, just to take the edge off Yixing’s seriousness.

Yixing shrugged and looked over at him. “Everything,” he said. Then he walked away and left Jongin staring at the stage. He thought it was a trite answer, at first.

But then he started remembering what it was like out there, those first years. How you looked up at the lights and smiled because you’d _made it_ , everything had paid off. How it felt to get dressed up in a costume and put on a performance with the roar of a crowd in your ears. How the music sounded when your dancing was perfect. He wanted that back—the naiveté, maybe. Or the ability to hope.

The other thing that happened to bring him out to Los Angeles occurred a few weeks later. Jongdae’s birthday party was held at his spacious apartment, and a small group of celebrities and friends were invited. There he announced that his greatest dream had finally been achieved—beaming, Jongdae told the room that he and Zhang Liyin were engaged. This was a long time coming, but everyone congratulated them as happily as if they’d been totally surprised.

Jongin found himself standing alone later in the party, staring at a picture of EXO Jongdae had hung on the wall. It was from their first concert tour, and they’d all signed it. Their smiles belied the exhaustion, discontent, and in-group fighting that occurred that year—and yet, Jongin was sure that the smiles were true in their own way, too. A part of him was wistful for those early years. The energy, the feeling that your best days were ahead of you, the sound of your name being bellowed by a crowd—how could he not recall it fondly?

“You okay?”

Jongin turned and saw Jongdae walking toward him. The rest of the party was still centered in the living room down the hall. Jongin shrugged, and gestured to the picture. “Just—remembering.”

Jongdae came and stood next to him, smiling a little. Jongdae had learned early how to compartmentalize, and so he’d handled those years far better than the rest of them. But he was exceptionally happy now. Jongin wondered what it would feel like to have proper plans set for his own future.

Jongin sighed. “You ever think about what might have happened—if you’d done something differently?”

Jongdae looked at him, perplexed. “Like what?”

“I dunno.” Jongin stared at his smiling face in the picture. “Like—what if I’d stuck it out in ballet? Who would I be now?”

Jongdae laughed, lightly. In the background, their friends and coworkers were in an uproar over something, their laughter carrying down the hall. Jongin felt distant from all of it, his eyes locked on the picture in front of him.

“You can’t ever know that, you know,” Jongdae said. “I mean—you take what you have, right? Keep going.”

Jongin tilted his head over to look at him, grinning a little. “You ever think what might have happened if you hadn’t come up with that whole plan to ask Liyin out?”

Jongdae’s smile fell, just slightly. He reached over and patted Jongin’s shoulder. “It would have been a lot easier, you know. Not better, but easier. But now, I’m glad I went through all the crap it took for us to stay together. It was worth it in the end.”

Out of nowhere, a memory popped into Jongin’s head. He suddenly remembered standing one early morning on a stage for rehearsals. It was a company concert, so all the groups were there, tired, full of nervous energy, feeding on industry gossip they hadn’t heard while they were separated. And Krystal was standing off to one side, alone. Jongin had a hopeless crush on her then, the kind he knew to keep buried. But he’d gone over and spoken to her. He couldn’t remember what they talked about, only that he’d spent the whole time debating on whether or not to actually ask her out, and decided against it in the end.

“You know,” Jongdae said, drawing Jongin out of his reverie, “Your life isn’t over just because your career as a pop star isn't going to last.”

Jongin laughed. “Yeah, I know,” he said. But he was only beginning to understand.

 

 

A plan forms in Jongin’s mind as he lies there, feeling defeated. He’d come out here with a purpose—he wants a second chance. Maybe Krystal is “the one,” maybe she isn’t. He only knows that he’s admired her for years, been attracted to her the whole time, and always liked being around her. He can’t get a second chance at many things, but he can at this. And he can't leave until he tries.

In the morning he talks one of the managers into letting him borrow a car and then spends half an hour tracking down Krystal’s business online. All he has to go on is that she works in San Diego, but he finds her and plugs the address into his phone. The whole drive down he rehearses what he’ll say before he realizes he can’t plan this at all.

He reaches the office building in the early afternoon. It’s a sunny day, and this makes him hopeful somehow.

The secretary at the front desk listens patiently as Jongin stumbles through his rusty English, then directs him to an office on the third floor and says some things Jongin doesn’t follow. He takes the elevator up.

When the doors open, Krystal is standing on the other side. Her arms are folded across her chest. She looks severe, and underneath that, scared. As nervous as he is, Jongin is irrationally happy to see her again.

“So,” Krystal says. There are a few other people in the hall who turn to watch them, then disappear behind office doors. Krystal arches an eyebrow as she speaks. “Is this the part where you tell me you’re in love with me?”

Jongin freezes. Then, without thinking, he laughs.

“I’m not in love with you,” he says.

Krystal’s eyes widen. The silence between them grows very thick. She rakes a hand back through her hair, still staring at him, like he’s some sort of a madman. He probably is.

“Then why are you here?” she asks. Her voice shakes as she says it. Jongin grins in spite of himself.

“There were about fifty times over the years that I started to ask you out, and then didn’t.”

She’s still staring at him like he’s crazy, but Jongin finally feels like he’s doing something right.

“So I’m asking you out now,” he says. “No, I’m not in love with you. I’m not that crazy. But all those years, how many things did we miss out on because we were so busy being famous? All I want is a second chance.”

Krystal’s wide eyes and creased eyebrows should discourage him, but they don’t. He gestures behind him. “I saw a place that said ‘tacos’ on my way here and I really, really want to try it. What do you say? Want to go on a date with me?”

Krystal blinks. She looks around wildly. Then finally, huffing a little, she turns back to him. “That place is no good. There’s a better one a few streets away.”

She pushes past him and jabs the button for the elevator. She’s not looking at him, and still looks severe and a bit pissed off, but Jongin can’t stop smiling. “So it’s a date?” he asks.

Krystal sighs. The elevator doors open and she looks back at him. She’s still so beautiful that Jongin’s heart picks up a few paces when their eyes meet.

“Only because—I like that idea,” she says. She steps into the elevator and he follows. When he stands beside her, she takes hold of his arm. Unlike the day before, this time it feels natural. Her head rests against his shoulder.

“What idea?” he asks.

The elevator doors open on the first floor. They step out and Krystal looks up at him again.

“Of second chances,” she says.

 

 

_end._


End file.
